This document discusses the history and benefits of arts education, challenges it currently faces, and ways to strengthen its role in education. It notes that while teaching artists have helped mitigate declines in arts education since the 1970s, overall access has continued to drop. The document advocates for developing arts integration, building demand for arts education through sharing stories of its impacts, improving sustainability for teaching artists, and expanding professional development for both artists and teachers to strengthen arts pedagogy.

1. Teaching artists and the future of education:
Finding hope in unexpected places
Rhode Island Foundation November 8, 2012 Nick Rabkin
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2. A better mop? Or better than
a mop?
Teaching Artists and the Future of Education 2

3. Arts education improves
student outcomes
• Better grades Also, more likely
to know
• Proficiency in math something about
• Higher standardized test scores the arts!
• Less likely to be bored or drop
out
• More friends of other races
• Less TV
• More likely to go to college,
graduate, and get a job
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4. Very big deal
Correlation
It’s the arts,
stupid!
strongest for low-
income students.
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5. After nearly a century of
growth, arts ed has declined
for three decades.
Childhood arts
education, 1930-
2008
Up 184% from
1930 to 1980,
down 25% from
1980 to 2008 with
no sign that the
decline is slowing.
Teaching Artists and the Future of Education 5

6. Teaching artists
Significant
numbers of
Teaching Artists
have entered
schools since
1975.
They’ve mitigated,
but not reversed
the decline.
Photo: Khanisha
Foster with
students, Project
AIM/CCAP.
6

7. Jane Addams founded Hull-House in 1889

8. Benny Goodman at a Hull-House special event;
Louis Armstrong with his cornet teacher from the
Home for Colored Waifs on TV in 1963.
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9. New pedagogy emerged at the settlements,
breaking with conservatory veneration of the
classical world and elite patronage, and included
rigorous and critical exploration of the real world.
.
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10. Viola Spolin
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11. Art for arts’ sake—art for people’s
sake: different pedagogies
.
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12. A Swiffer for education?

13. A Nation at Risk, the template for school reform for
three decades.
Descarte’s error
Arts education is
understood as
affective and
expressive, not
academic and
cognitive, a
distraction from
‘real learning.’
Teaching Artists and the Future of Education 13

14. Fiscal crisis
New York fiscal
crisis, 1975.
Structural
economic changes
provoked a
sustained series of
crises that choked
most large school
systems from the
mid-1970s on.
The crisis has
taken different
forms and
continues today.
14

15. Tax rebellion
From Proposition
13 (1978) to the
Tea Parky
15

16. Has school reform worked?
• HS graduation rate flat over last 20
years
16

17. Has school reform worked?
• HS graduation rate flat over last 20
years
• Dropout rate remains high
17

18. Has school reform worked?
• HS graduation rate flat over last 20
years
• Dropout rate remains high
• Achievement gap narrowed in 70s, but
has widened since
18

19. Has school reform worked?
• HS graduation rate flat over last 20
years
• Dropout rate remains high
• Achievement gap narrowed in 70s, but
has widened since
• US students have fallen farther behind
students from more countries in more
subjects
19

20. Has school reform worked?
• HS graduation rate flat over last 20
years
• Dropout rate remains high
• Achievement gap narrowed in 70s, but
has widened since
• US students have fallen farther behind
students from more countries in more
subjects
• Charters’ record is no better than
conventional public schools
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21. Are TAs good teachers?
Aside from socio-economic background, good teaching is the
most important predictor of student success in school.

22. What is good teaching?
• Student centered: Balances students’ interests,
questions, and prior knowledge, with new
challenges, choices and responsibilities
Zemelman, Daniels & Hyde (2005) Best Practice: Today’s Standards for Teaching and Learning in America’s Schools
Perkins (2010) Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education
Smith, Lee, and Newman (2001) Instruction and Achievement in Chicago Elementary Schools
22

23. What is good teaching?
• Student centered: Balances students’ interests,
questions, and prior knowledge, with new
challenges, choices and responsibilities
• Deeply cognitive: Learning is the consequence of
thinking and making work about meaningful, rich,
compelling problems, concepts, and ideas
Zemelman, Daniels & Hyde (2005) Best Practice: Today’s Standards for Teaching and Learning in America’s Schools
Perkins (2010) Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education
Smith, Lee, and Newman (2001) Instruction and Achievement in Chicago Elementary Schools
23

24. What is good teaching?
• Student centered: Balances students’ interests,
questions, and prior knowledge, with new
challenges, choices and responsibilities
• Deeply cognitive: Learning is the consequence of
thinking and making work about meaningful, rich,
compelling problems, concepts, and ideas
• Social: Collaborative activities are more powerful
than individualist strategies
Zemelman, Daniels & Hyde (2005) Best Practice: Today’s Standards for Teaching and Learning in America’s Schools
Perkins (2010) Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education
Smith, Lee, and Newman (2001) Instruction and Achievement in Chicago Elementary Schools
24

25. Engagement is job one
For many, ‘A slow process of disengagement begins in 3rd
grade…’ Photo by Joel Wanek
Photo by Joel Wanek 25

26. Voice
An aesthetic signature and a perspective on the world and life, a
set of concerns, issues, and ideas that matter to students. Student
work from Project AIM/CCAP, Joel Wanek, Teaching Artist
Courtesy Project AIM, photo by Joel Wanek 26

27. Building a community in the
classroom
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28. Arts integration: The ‘elegant fit’:
Moving the mind, connecting ideas, and
building understanding.
Wheatstacks lesson credit: Luke Albrecht,
8th grade math, Crown Academy, Chicago
See: AIMPrint: New Relationships in the Arts and Leaning, Weiss and Lichtenstein.
Renaissance in the Classroom, Burnaford, Aprill and Weiss.
28

29. Build demand for arts ed
Research must be complemented with real stories. TAs are a great
source.

30. Make the field sustainable
Under-employment, low pay, and health insurance are serious
problems for artists. Funders and employers need to take
them seriously.

31. Arts education is vital to the
future of the arts, too.
Teaching artists are experts on how to create more engaging
and meaningful artistic experiences

32. Develop arts integration
Integrated and disciplinary instruction are more alike than different
when grounded in good practice. Let’s get beyond the conflict and
invest in serious development!

33. Arts ed in both schools and
communities

34. Advocate for specialists and
TAs
Good schools have both already. Make them models for
collaboration, not competition.

35. Assessment – the next
frontier
Bring the authentic assessment of the arts into classrooms.

36. Professional development
• Use the best arts pedagogy to train teaching artists AND
teachers in all settings. Hands-on, project-based, problem
oriented, learning by doing.

38. Nick Rabkin
Senior Research Scientist
nickrabkin@gmail.com
Photos by Joel Wanek
Thank You!